Meaning of talk like a book | Babel Free

Definitions

1. To talk pedantically, or using excessively difficult or literary words.
   informal
2. To talk precisely and with authority.
   informal

Equivalents

Examples

“People ſhould not vvrite as they talk, except in letters (vvhich are but a converſation in vvriting): it is too careleſs. And they neither can nor ought to ſpeak as they vvrite, for this vvould be unnatural. I ſuppose it vvas first intended as a compliment to a perſon to ſay, He talks like a book; but this, vvhich vvas once looked upon as a compliment, and vvas, indeed, a pretty high-ſtrain'd one, has ſerved ſince for one of the diſtinguiſhing marks of a coxcomb.”

““I am sure,” said Abel to Caliban, looking at the hearth-stone of the chimney with lively curiosity, “that there is below there, the entrance to a subterranean palace, like the garden in which Aladdin took his lamp, with a pavement of sapphire, pillars of diamond, golden fruits, the seeds of the pomegranate, rubies, and where a little fairy with a wand, is seated on a throne of mother-of-pearl; she is beautiful as a spring morning; she has a chariot drawn by pigeons, and she will take me to see my father and mother.” “Ah, Abel!” replied Caliban, “thou talkest like a book!””

“I have often thought as I sat at table with people who were found of "talking like a book," that what they said was in great measure as unintelligible to English-speaking persons who were not classically educated, as simply-bred Romans must have found that of Cicero and his set when they interlarded their talk with Greek.”

“Marg[are]t. And what am I but a labourer like yourselves—one o’ the hand-spinners those cranks and rollers will undo? There stands my wheel. (Points to it.) No lass in Leigh or Preston has worked harder or earned more at hand-spinning than I have. No lass in Leigh or Preston either better knows the curse invention brings to the inventor and his home. Have I not prayed my master but now, as I have prayed my father for years, to turn from these things—to leave Lancashire to the warp and weft that was good enough for our fathers, and to the old wheel and shuttle on which our hands were most at home? Mob (murmurs). She’s reet. Bob. Curse me, but thou talkest like a book. Dick. Or like a man; that’s more to the purpose. Marg[are]t. But none the more will I see this wondrous work of my master’s brain and hand—the thing he has made and loved—that’s been to him as a bairn—that may well be more to him than a wife—smashed by those that wish as little good to him as to his work.”

“[The conversations in the books] are often wanting in force (which, as they frequently take place between men alone, and rarely between women alone, is perhaps not to be wondered at); when serious they are a little apt to be sententious—the characters being too much addicted to "talking like a book"; and when lively or humorous are somewhat inclined to be rather trivial than bright.”

““Then, who,” the sick man meekly said, / “Shall heal the sick and hide the dead?— / “Snatch the despairer’s poisoned cup; / Clothe shame, and give the outcast sup?— / “Lighten, if only by a hair, / The load of human pain and care?” / The hermit gave a kindly look; / “Faith, now thou talkest like a book. / “Here, come!” he seized a half-charred brand— / “Write on my wall there, something grand. / “I doubt if God used thee so much / To find and heal things with thy touch.””

““I pray thee, Mens, didst thou not understand that this ragged man was but a crazed fool?” “Nay, sir,” said I to Vegge Go, “thou art severe in thy say; for he is but an ill-balanced man, of whom ’tis claimed that he is on the borderland, and of the higher order of degenerates.” “Gracious goodness!” said Vegge Go, “if fool he be, where dost thou find thy man of sense? He talketh like a book and looketh like a beggar.” “True,” said Theo Celsus, who had joined us. “They are oft inflated talkers, whose misguided judgment may lead them into the realms of genius, only to lapse into bombast, pretense, and mediocrity.[…]””

“"You talk like a book, my friend," said my lord, smiling, and puffing away at his pipe, "but you talked of saving time, and I do not yet know the purpose of your errand."”

“Being with her mother made her talk like a book. Her mother talked like a book: then she did. They must; if they did not they would scream. … But they were English ladies. Of scholarly habits of mind. It was horrible.”

“‘Unfortunately, I am one of those whose stumbling phrases, disconnected and unuttered for many a year, may displease Your Presence by their inelegance. May your life be extended.’ I touched my head, eyes and heart, in a suitably ceremonial way. ‘Thou talkest like a book’, he muttered. I searched my repertoire and resumed, ‘Noble Sir: the sacred Arabian tongue has been, for us rough mountaineers, largely a language of the books for even unto a thousand years.[’]”

“He loved that I "talked like a book" and not like any of the other girls, […]”

“You cannot conceive, ladies, hovv good a ſchool that tavern vvas to me. It vvas frequented by a great number of learned men, vvho talked like a book concerning the character of a vvorthy man; of the pleaſure and advantage that, in every condition of life, attended the being juſt, good, and honourable; […]”

“"Thence," said the slim gentleman, glibly talking like a book—a railway guide-book, at least—"thence by rail to Utrecht and Emerick on the Prussian frontier, you know. Then to Cologne—remember the Three Kings and the Eleven Thousand Virgins."”

“But then no disgrace is attached in France to saying a thing neatly; whereas in England, to talk like a book is to give in one’s resignation to society.”

“His voice, even when he spoke in hate, was precise and impersonal. He talked like a book; his talk had the clarity and dryness of a book.”

“Apart from some minimal tidying up (nearly always to my questions and comments; [Greil] Marcus “talks like a book,” as folk in England used to say about eloquent persons) and one small liberty taken with sequencing to preserve chronological flow, this is exactly how the conversation went down.”

CEFR level